IT analyst giant Gartner has identified what it sees as the top 10 strategic IT trends for 2023, with trends built around three key themes: optimize, scale and pioneer.
In the face of economic turbulence, Gartner is calling on organizations to look beyond simple cost savings efforts and continue down their digital transformation journey to help the company become more efficient.
The trends are also impacted by environmental, social and governance expectations and regulations, which translate into the shared responsibility to apply sustainable technologies, says David Groombridge, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.
“Every technology investment will need to be set off against its impact on the environment, keeping future generations in mind. ‘Sustainable by default’ as an objective requires sustainable technology,” Groombridge says.
To that end, Gartner identified sustainability as a trend that traverses all three key themes. Citing a recent survey, the firm says executives reported that environmental and social changes are now a top-three priority for investors, forcing organizations to invest more in solutions designed to address those shifts and meet sustainability goals.
That requires a new sustainable technology framework to increase the efficiency of IT services, enable enterprise sustainability through technologies like traceability, analytics, renewable energy and AI. In addition, sustainable technology should be deployed to help customers achieve their own sustainability goals, Gartner says.
Under the “pioneer” theme, Gartner lists the metaverse, superapps and adaptive AI as key trends for 2023.
According to Gartner, a complete metaverse will be device-independent and won’t be owned by a single vendor. It will have a virtual economy of itself, enabled by digital currencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). By 2027, Gartner predicts that over 40% of large organizations worldwide will use a combination of Web3, AR cloud and digital twins in metaverse-based projects aimed at increasing revenue.
The firm says superapps — a combination of an app, platform and ecosystem in one application—will be used by more than 50% of the global population by 2027.
Also under the pioneer theme is adaptive AI, which Gartner says will continuously retrain models and learn within runtime and development environments based on new data to adapt quickly to real-world changes in organizations that need to be able to pivot quickly.
Under the “optimize” theme, Gartner lists digital immune system, applied observability and AI trust, risk and security management.
According to Gartner, a digital immune system can provide a roadmap to help CIOs and their teams deliver high business value, mitigate risk and increase customer satisfaction. These systems combine data-drive insights, automated and extreme testing, automated incident resolution, software engineering within IT operations and security in the application supply chain. By 2025, organizations that invest in this will reduce system downtime by up to 80%, Gartner predicts.
Applied observability, which feeds digitized artifacts such as logs, traces, API calls, dwell time, downloads and file transfers in a highly orchestrated and integrated approach, will help accelerate organizational decision-making, the analyst firm says.
“Applied observability enables organizations to exploit their data artifacts for competitive advantage,” said Karamouzis “It is powerful because it elevates the strategic importance of the right data at the right time for rapid action based on confirmed stakeholder actions, rather than intentions. When planned strategically and executed successfully, applied observability is the most powerful source of data-driven decision-making.”
With more than 40% of organizations reporting an AI privacy breach or security incident, Gartner says trust, risk and security management in AI will be key to improving their AI project results. Organizations should implement new capabilities to ensure model reliability, trustworthiness, security and data protection.
Under the “scale” theme, Gartner lists industry cloud platforms, platform engineering and wireless value realization.
Industry specific clouds can be leveraged to create unique and differentiating digital business initiatives, provide agility and innovation and lead to a reduced time to market while avoiding lock-in, the firm says. By 2027, 50% of enterprises will us industry cloud platforms, Gartner predicts.
Another trend cited by Gartner is platform engineering, which it defines as is the discipline of building and operating self-service internal developer platforms for software delivery and life cycle management with the goal of optimizing the developer experience and accelerating delivery of customer value. By 2026, Gartner predicts that 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams by and that 75% of those will include developer self-service portals.
With several wireless technologies available, Gartner says enterprises will use a spectrum of wireless solutions to cater for all environments, including Wi-Fi, mobile, low-power services and radio connectivity. By 2025, 60% of enterprises will be using at least five wireless technologies simultaneously. These networks will provide insight using built-in analysis and low-power systems will harvest energy directly from the network, turning the network into a source of direct business value.
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